June 8. 2018 Week Week 23rd Friday

You'll have bad times, but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to.

每个人都会经历低谷，但也正是这些低谷会让你注意到平时注意不到的东西。

From Good Will Hunting.

Experience in bad times may also have some positive effects on our personal growth, as long as we haven't been defeated by those awful feelings brought by bad times.

When things are bad, if we can accept them as they are, we can learn a lot so as to prepare for the coming of good times.

To cope with some darkest moments in life, we have to know what we are up against.

Accept the reality, it is grim, but it isn't all grim, when we hit the bottom, we also reach the end of the line, that is, bad times sometimes mean that good times are coming.

If we know that, really know it in our hearts, then we can get through anything.

We can get on with the act of living life, past the nastiness of an unpleasant, present situation.

We can see the good that is still out there waiting for us, not the invented good of the optimist, but the true goodness of what is yet to come.

That is the vision that can help us hold on for the ride.

So if in bad times, please be optimistic, take stock, deal, and move on, it is the right way to live.

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

就像真爱很难得一样，真正的友谊更难得。

With the days of having hundreds or thousands of wechat "friends" upon us, true friendships built on respects, a common bond, and shared memories seem to be fewer and far between in the modern world.

We can instantly connect with anyone online, but does that make them a tried and true friend?

On the other hand, the friends we thought we could count on in real life turned out to be just as distant, flaky, and unreliable ones.

Some studies show that even if we have thousands of social-network friends, we usually only maintain close relationships with a few of them in real life.

So, how can we make sure that these friendships we have invested so much in emotionally are actually authentic?

True friendship involves recognition or familiarity with each other.

As friends, we often share likes and dislikes, interests, pursuits, and passion.

True friendship involves action, doing something for someone else while expecting nothing in return, sharing thoughts and feelings without fear of judgement or negative criticism.

True friendship involves realtionship, takes time, time to get know each other, time to build shared memories, time to invest in each other's growth.

So, am I a true friend for someone else?